Download or read book The Alchemy of Culture written by Richard Rudgley and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Daughters of Alchemy written by Meredith K. Ray and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-06 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meredith Ray shows that women were at the vanguard of empirical culture during the Scientific Revolution. They experimented with medicine and alchemy at home and in court, debated cosmological discoveries in salons and academies, and in their writings used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for women’s intellectual equality to men.
Download or read book The Alchemy of Us written by Ainissa Ramirez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “timely, informative, and fascinating” study of 8 inventions—and how they shaped our world—with “totally compelling” insights on little-known inventors throughout history (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction) In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines 8 inventions and reveals how they shaped the human experience: • Clocks • Steel rails • Copper communication cables • Photographic film • Light bulbs • Hard disks • Scientific labware • Silicon chips Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the way to the computer. She describes how our pursuit of precision in timepieces changed how we sleep; how the railroad helped commercialize Christmas; how the necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style; and how a young chemist exposed the use of Polaroid’s cameras to create passbooks to track black citizens in apartheid South Africa. These fascinating and inspiring stories offer new perspectives on our relationships with technologies. Ramirez shows not only how materials were shaped by inventors but also how those materials shaped culture, chronicling each invention and its consequences—intended and unintended. Filling in the gaps left by other books about technology, Ramirez showcases little-known inventors—particularly people of color and women—who had a significant impact but whose accomplishments have been hidden by mythmaking, bias, and convention. Doing so, she shows us the power of telling inclusive stories about technology. She also shows that innovation is universal—whether it's splicing beats with two turntables and a microphone or splicing genes with two test tubes and CRISPR.
Download or read book The Business of Alchemy written by Pamela H. Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Business of Alchemy, Pamela Smith explores the relationships among alchemy, the court, and commerce in order to illuminate the cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In showing how an overriding concern with religious salvation was transformed into a concentration on material increase and economic policies, Smith depicts the rise of modern science and early capitalism. In pursuing this narrative, she focuses on that ideal prey of the cultural historian, an intellectual of the second rank whose career and ideas typify those of a generation. Smith follows the career of Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) from university to court, his projects from New World colonies to an old-world Pansophic Panopticon, and his ideas from alchemy to economics. Teasing out the many meanings of alchemy for Becher and his contemporaries, she argues that it provided Becher with not only a direct key to power over nature but also a language by which he could convince his princely patrons that their power too must rest on liquid wealth. Agrarian society regarded merchants with suspicion as the nonproductive exploiters of others' labor; however, territorial princes turned to commerce for revenue as the cost of maintaining the state increased. Placing Becher’s career in its social and intellectual context, Smith shows how he attempted to help his patrons assimilate commercial values into noble court culture and to understand the production of surplus capital as natural and legitimate. With emphasis on the practices of natural philosophy and extensive use of archival materials, Smith brings alive the moment of cultural transformation in which science and the modern state emerged.
Download or read book The Alchemy of Conquest written by Ralph Bauer and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of the Discovery of the Americas was concurrent with the Age of Discovery in science. In The Alchemy of Conquest, Ralph Bauer explores the historical relationship between the two, focusing on the connections between religion and science in the Spanish, English, and French literatures about the Americas during the early modern period. As sailors, conquerors, travelers, and missionaries were exploring "new worlds," and claiming ownership of them, early modern men of science redefined what it means to "discover" something. Bauer explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the discovery of the Americas and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. The book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of late medieval alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, José de Acosta, Nicolás Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt.
Download or read book American Alchemy written by Brian Roberts and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California during the gold rush was a place of disputed claims, shoot-outs, gambling halls, and prostitution; a place populated by that rough and rebellious figure, the forty-niner; in short, a place that seems utterly unconnected to middle-class culture.
Download or read book Alchemical Belief written by Bruce Janacek and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-08-21 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their national—and in some cases royalist—loyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in England’s church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake.
Download or read book Mystical Metal of Gold written by Stanton J. Linden and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Prospero s America written by Walter W. Woodward and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Prospero's America, Walter W. Woodward examines the transfer of alchemical culture to America by John Winthrop, Jr., one of English colonization's early giants. Winthrop participated in a pan-European network of natural philosophers who believed alchemy could improve the human condition and hasten Christ's Second Coming. Woodward demonstrates the influence of Winthrop and his philosophy on New England's cultural formation: its settlement, economy, religious toleration, Indian relations, medical practice, witchcraft prosecution, and imperial diplomacy. Prospero's America reconceptualizes the significance of early modern science in shaping New England hand in hand with Puritanism and politics.
Download or read book Essential Substances written by Richard Rudgley and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Rudgley's first book, Essential Substances, was the winner of the British Museum Prometheus Award and hailed as a masterpiece by the Director of Harvard Botanical Museum. It is still one of the few books to have explored the role of drugs in the religious, political, economic and sexual life of our species from prehistory to the present day, covering a range of cultures as diverse as the Amazonian Indians, the Scythians of the ancient world and the witches of Medieval Europe alongside inner city crack and drugs in the counterculture. It is a magical tour of the bizarre world of intoxicants peopled by tribesmen and mystics, statesmen and writers, housewives and yuppies. Rudgley cogently shows how the significance of these substances extends beyond simple pleasure to the economic, political, and sexual life of a community. In the process, he challenges our assumptions that deem certain intoxicants socially and legally acceptable, while others remain taboo. Essential Substances remains a timely, much-needed reconsideration of the roles intoxicants play in our lives and society. Added for this edition is a new appendix, 'A Psychoactive Bestiary'. 'A splendid contribution to the new wave of scholarship that is forcing a different approach to our ages-old fascination with hallucinogenic plants and altered states. Richard Rudgley is to be congratulated' - Terence McKenna, author of Food of the Gods and True Hallucinations 'Should be required reading for all legislators who think disliked substances can be made to vanish by means of criminal sanctions' - Andrew Weil MD, author of The Natural Mind Richard Rudgley is a critically acclaimed author whose books have been translated into twelve languages. The author of several books, he has also written and presented several documentaries that have aired on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and on various channels internationally. Arktos has also republished his books Wildest Dreams: An Anthology of Drug-Related Literature, which collects writings both ancient and modern describing the drug experience; and Barbarians, which is about the Dark Ages.
Download or read book An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors written by Curtis Craddock and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors is Curtis Craddock's delightful and engrossing fantasy debut featuring a genius heroine and her guardian, a royal musketeer, which Brandon Sanderson calls, "A great read!" Born with a physical disability, no magical talent, and a precocious intellect, Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs has lived her life being underestimated by her family and her kingdom. The only person who appreciates her true self is Jean-Claude, the fatherly musketeer who had guarded her since birth. All shall change, however, when an unlikely marriage proposal is offered, to the second son of a dying king in an empire collapsing into civil war. But the last two women betrothed to this prince were murdered, and a sorcerer-assassin is bent on making Isabelle the third. Isabelle and Jean-Claude plunge into a great maze of prophecy, intrigue, and betrayal, where everyone wears masks of glamour and lies. Step by dangerous step, Isabelle must unravel the lies of her enemies and discovers a truth more perilous than any deception. “A setting fabulous and strange, heroes to cheer for, villains to detest, a twisty, tricky plot — I love this novel!” —Lawrence Watt Evans “A thrilling adventure full of palace intrigue, mysterious ancient mechanisms, and aerial sailing ships!” —David D. Levine At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Alchemy of Race and Rights written by Patricia J. Williams and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diary of a law professor.
Download or read book Alchemy Jung and Remedios Varo written by Dennis Pottenger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alchemy, Jung, and Remedios Varo offers a depth psychological analysis of the art and life of Remedios Varo, a Spanish surrealist painter. The book uses Varo’s paintings in a revolutionary way: to critique the patriarchal underpinnings of Jungian psychology, alchemy, and Surrealism, illuminating how Varo used painting to address cultural complexes that silence female expression. The book focuses on how the practice of alchemical psychology, through the power of imagination and the archetypal Feminine, can lead to healing and transformation for individuals and culture. Alchemy, Jung, and Remedios Varo offers the first in-depth psychological treatment of the role alchemy played in the friendship between Varo and Leonora Carrington—a connection that led to paintings that protest the pitfalls of patriarchy. This unique book will be of great interest for academics, scholars, and post-graduate students in the fields of analytical psychology, art history, Surrealism, cultural criticism, and Jungian studies.
Download or read book The Experimental Fire written by Jennifer M. Rampling and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 400-year history of the development of alchemy in England that brings to light the evolution of the practice. In medieval and early modern Europe, the practice of alchemy promised extraordinary physical transformations. Who would not be amazed to see base metals turned into silver and gold, hard iron into soft water, and deadly poison into elixirs that could heal the human body? To defend such claims, alchemists turned to the past, scouring ancient books for evidence of a lost alchemical heritage and seeking to translate their secret language and obscure imagery into replicable, practical effects. Tracing the development of alchemy in England over four hundred years, from the beginning of the fourteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, Jennifer M. Rampling illuminates the role of alchemical reading and experimental practice in the broader context of national and scientific history. Using new manuscript sources, she shows how practitioners like George Ripley, John Dee, and Edward Kelley, as well as many previously unknown alchemists, devised new practical approaches to alchemy while seeking the support of English monarchs. By reconstructing their alchemical ideas, practices, and disputes, Rampling reveals how English alchemy was continually reinvented over the space of four centuries, resulting in changes to the science itself. In so doing, The Experimental Fire bridges the intellectual history of chemistry and the wider worlds of early modern patronage, medicine, and science.
Download or read book Hidden Truths written by Lawrence Eugene Sullivan and published by Macmillan Publishing Company. This book was released on 1989 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of a series covering the history, practices and beliefs of religions this book includes gnosticism, witchcraft, magic throughout the world and in cultures ancient and modern as well as an essay on alchemy.
Download or read book Becoming Gold written by Shannon Grimes and published by . This book was released on 2018-12-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FOREMOST among the alchemists of the Hellenized world, the "divine" Zosimos practiced a sacred art in which metaphysical and metallurgical realities were fundamentally intertwined. Rather than being an exclusive product of Alexandrian syncretism, however, the dual spiritual and material emphasis of this alchemy reveals much deeper roots than expected: roots which extend deep into the religious cultures of the Ancient Near East. Through the methods of "cultural biography" and "thick description," Becoming Gold guides the reader deep into the temple culture of Roman Egypt, where the role of scribal priest intersects explicitly with the metallurgical craft traditions. Going beyond generalizations, Grimes explores the metal-coloring techniques developed in Egyptian polychromic statuary, as well as the rituals of statue animation performed by the priests of the House of Life. In this light, Zosimos is increasingly revealed as a scribal priest responsible for preserving and translating ancient Egyptian metallurgical recipes; a high-ranking goldsmith who oversaw temple statue makers. Against the wider backdrop of late antique religion and philosophy, Grimes also details the fascinating connections between alchemy, theurgy, and gnosticism. Here, Zosimos's spiritual attitudes are explored through the daimonic versus astrological influences upon alchemical operations; meditative practices using mirrors of electrum to attain divine gnosis; and the overarching imperative to transform the bonds of embodiment into vehicles for divinity. Zosimos reveals an alchemy in which spiritual and material realities are ultimately nondual; in which metals becomes living bodies for divine spirits; and in which the immortal soul--luminous and golden--radiates through its material forms.
Download or read book The Black Sun written by Stanton Marlan and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also available in an open-access, full-text edition at http://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/86080 The black sun, an ages-old image of the darkness in individual lives and in life itself, has not been treated hospitably in the modern world. Modern psychology has seen darkness primarily as a negative force, something to move through and beyond, but it actually has an intrinsic importance to the human psyche. In this book, Jungian analyst Stanton Marlan reexamines the paradoxical image of the black sun and the meaning of darkness in Western culture. In the image of the black sun, Marlan finds the hint of a darkness that shines. He draws upon his clinical experiences—and on a wide range of literature and art, including Goethe’s Faust, Dante’s Inferno, the black art of Rothko and Reinhardt—to explore the influence of light and shadow on the fundamental structures of modern thought as well as the contemporary practice of analysis. He shows that the black sun accompanies not only the most negative of psychic experiences but also the most sublime, resonating with the mystical experience of negative theology, the Kabbalah, the Buddhist notions of the void, and the black light of the Sufi Mystics. An important contribution to the understanding of alchemical psychology, this book draws on a postmodern sensibility to develop an original understanding of the black sun. It offers insight into modernity, the act of imagination, and the work of analysis in understanding depression, trauma, and transformation of the soul. Marlan’s original reflections help us to explore the unknown darkness conventionally called the Self. The image of Kali appearing in the color insert following page 44 is © Maitreya Bowen, reproduced with her permission,[email protected].
